A semi-biased commentary on British and American politics, culture and current affairs

Uber

Whenever there is a battle between the interests of ordinary consumers and the tired, unimaginative producers who rip them off, the Left take the side of the special interests over the little guy every single time

Wherever there is technological innovation and the prospect of incremental or revolutionary improvements in the way we live, there is also inevitably a finger-wagging lefty standing by with ten good reasons why humanity should stay in the cave, be terrified of fire and reject the wheel because it will put professional floor-draggers out of work.

And so it is with Uber. Left Foot Forward have come up with a list of five things you didn’t know about Uber – the obvious nature of which is clearly based on the assumption that you are a credulous simpleton who has no curiosity or understanding about how the services you use every day come to be delivered. And unsurprisingly, this list of five scandalous “unknown” things just happens to support the case for regulating Uber to death and propping up the greedy, inefficient, snarlingly anti-competitive black taxi cartel.

Uber represents everything good about capitalism, disruptive innovation at its most useful. Any politician who wants to make it harder or impossible for Uber to operate is directly working against the interests of the people

If a group of heavies from, say, the Unite union had broken into Parliament during the recent debate on the Trade Union Act, disrupted the House of Commons, forced an end to the session and knocked a security guard unconscious in the process, what do you think David Cameron’s Conservative government would be doing right now?

Exactly. Those involved would be receiving the same full measure of British justice as was dealt out to the London rioters back in 2011 and looking at some hard jail time, while the unions they represented would be positively begging for measures as mild as those currently proposed by the government. The Conservatives would be at total war with the unions, and Labour’s hyperbolic claims about the Evil Tories wanting to roll back two hundred years of industrial relations regulation might actually start to seem plausible.

All of which makes it surprising that when exactly the same thing happened at London’s City Hall earlier this month – when members of that famous cartel, London’s black cab drivers, burst into the chamber and brought an abrupt end to Mayor’s Question Time – there were absolutely no negative consequences whatsoever.

They waved banners calling for Johnson to “stand firm” against “Uber’s lobbyists”, with suggestions that the ride-sharing taxi app puts public safety at risk.

Ah yes, appeals for politicians to consider public safety – the last refuge of the desperate, antiquated monopolist fighting a lost cause as they slide into irrelevance. Won’t somebody please think of the children, too, while we’re at it?